Razer Blade Owner's Lounge

Hi guys. Got my R2 blade and upgraded to windows 8.

Problem is, my keyboard and switchblade UI isn't working although the keys are lit. Installed the latest firmware 1.02 and synapse but still no difference.

Any help is appreciated!

 

Hmmm. Looks like the first gen blade on razers site is now only 2k. Still overpriced imo. last years tech (and not even the high end at that) should be going more for around 1500 at this point at most.

 

Anyone know how to keep the razer logo glowing even while the lid is closed but still plugged in to the charger? :x

 

the logo only glows when the display is lit up, dunno if there is a way to bypass this, or if that's even a good idea

 

ignore this one, for the life of me i cant figure out how to delete the post

i had the same issue when i updated, i had run the 'firmware' before the update then after the update the ui wasnt working. i ended up getting it to work like so: uninstall synapse 2.0 reinstall firmware inside windows 8, then reinstall synapse 2.0

everything worked for me at that point however i have one small issue with the screenshot app for whatever reason it seems like its not working correctly...sometimes it will take pics in game, and other times it takes pics of either black screen or desktop behind the game.

im sure its a software issue and its not detrimental to gameplay or use but it bugs me that its a broken feature

 

trying to find a way to create shortcuts for windows metro apps with the blade keys. like a google voice search macro would be nice...

 

Trying to figure out if this is par for the course, or if I need to send back to razer to fix.

Anyone else had issues with missing key strokes on WASD? Mostly A & D. I'll be in wow or CS trying to strafe left or right and it'll either hit, move me for .01 sec and then stop, as if it glithced out on me, or it won't register the hit all to gether.

I know if I hit the key a certain way and not hard enough it won't push down all the way to register, because I've tried to replicate that and was succcessful in doing so, so maybe that's it. But has anyone else experienced this?

I don't know about windows 8, but I was able to make shortcuts to program shortcuts to the black keys in 7, things like chrome, vent, wow, sc2, etc...Just open synpase and click the keys, select "launch application" give it a picture or text image, save, then go into track pad mode (on the switchblade homescreen, the one with fb/twitter/gmail button it's the most upper left one) then it'll have your keys you programed your .exe's to, just hit them and it should launch whatever application you put on it

 

my keyboard has been super responsive. i wasnt sure i would like this keyboard all that much, but i had been getting used to the swtor keyboard and they are similar. however, it seems far more responsive than my old laptop which had horrible keyboard flex and just awful keys in general, and it seems a lot better than my work laptop as well (dell something) i tried my a and d keys in particular but the only time it didnt register either key on every press was if i was pressing on the very top right corner (basically the center of my finger was in the gab between the Q W A S or E R D F keys and i would press down on the A or D keys it wouldnt register every hit, but i think you would probably notice that your finger wasnt on a key at that extreme of a finger placement.

 

Yeah see I think that's my issue, if I hit it dead in the middle or in the middle area, it's fine, it's just if i'ts to the side, or a corner, it's hit or miss someimes because I won't be pushing down on it hard enough.

That being said, I will agree this is a better/more responsive keyboard than my G73 was that's for sure. when doing everyday typing I don't notice it missing keys, just when playing a game that uses WASD, I guess my hands are just use to the positioning of my razer maurader keyboard

Thanks for the reply! Glad to know it's just me and not the keyboard itself!

 

just about had a heart attack, trackpad stopped working. switchblade buttons and trackpad buttons worked fine. deleted and reinstalled synapse and synaptic driver to no avail. restored my computer to an earlier time, still nothing. restarted it 3 times... was about to call razer support when I decided to do a system shut down. powered it off, turned back on 1 minute later and viola, trackpad is working again... if anyone has trackpad issues after waking blade from sleep (running windows 8), shut it down and power back on (restart doesn't fix the glitch).

other than these frustrating 20 minutes or so, loving my blade...

 

Oh wow! Yeah I've had switchblade crash on my once on my first boot while installing the drivers and firmware and what not, but never had an issue with it since.

Sidenote, I'm sure not everyone will agree but I've seen so many "_______ isn't working after I put it in sleep mode" across so many different laptops, I'd just power the laptop down instead of sleeping it...Boot times are only 15-20 seconds anyway, so it's not a big time saver!

But yeah, after reading all the random quirks with the g73 from people having problems putting in sleep mode I've vowed to just never use it!

 

Anyone know how to get higher clocks on the 660M? The G75's have the ability to go higher IIRC like up to 1300 on the core! WOW! Of course that means it'll get pretty toasty, but I"d like to atleast try to get there even if I don't really need to...just get a good benchmark score

Also, any idea's how to unlock the bios from not allowing CPU OC? Pretty sad that was enabled =(

 

Download MSI afterburner, probably the best GPU overclocking program, use at your own caution. Also grab Unigine heaven and 3d mark benchmarks to check stability. I wouldn't trust and stress tester like furmark because they push your gpu to unrealistic levels and I have had it kill on of my gpus. I'd have to see the bios to know, but because its a low voltage chip, and a reasonably low power system PSU wise, I'd assume its purely a safety precaution, its not uncommon for lower end boards to offer no oc'ing options, although I've never tried oc'ing a laptop. There might be a setting, if I find it when I get my blade I'll let you know.

 

I've got MSI Afterburner, only lets you do up to a +135 clock, something about the firmware or bios, people said to OC them on the blade you'd have to flash one or the other and reinstall to be able to clock higher.

3dmark6 is the one you're talking about? I'll look up unigine heaven tonight

I'll try setfsb for the CPU and see if that is fruitful at all, I guess it doesn't matter, ivy bridge is ivy bridge, even if I got .2 or .3 more out of it it's not going to make a huge difference really.

 

I haven't seen it mentioned yet but something I noticed when I opened mine up, the board is made by gigabyte. John, was it the same for the gen 1 blade? I know it doesn't really matter too much but I thought it interesting

 

has everyone here experiance issues with the wifi on the blade? mine is pending shipment, im trying to make sure i have everything in order for massive amounts of wow when i get home. unsure if i need to get a USB wifi adapter. i didnt know of issues with wifi before i got it

 

I haven't had any issues yet, I've been able to connect via work home starbucks and the awful citywide wifi near my house

 

Haven't had any isuses with mine at all on my netgear router or my atrix hd in hotspot mode.

GL in wow, plays it great!

 

have they released a SBUI app for wow yet? seems they said more were coming in september but.. none did.

 

Nope, not yet...Still waiting =(

 

how would the Blade go running GTA IV with the iCeHancer 2.1 graphics mod? Not necessarily maxed, just on high? On Native res.

 

I'm considering purchasing the "new" 2nd gen model, but I have a few questions.

1. How locked down is the chassis? Can I easily remove the HDD and install a second SSD in its place? How about transferring the SSD Raid caddy from my hp envy (contains 2 x 1.8" Intel X18 SSDs in Raid0 and fits inside 2.5" laptop drive slot) - do I need some kind of hardware Raid controller?

2. I understand the HM77 chipset is compatible with the i7-3740QM and i7-3840QM CPUs. Is it possible to replace the CPU, or replace the entire mobo with a different HM77 mobo which already includes the 3720QM, 3740QM, 3820QM or 3840QM?

3. how many DIMM slots does it contain? if it has 2 slots, would there be any problem replacing the factory RAM and using 2 x 8GB DDR3 instead? (I believe it comes standard with 2 x 4GB).

This seems like a great laptop, 0.88" thick is perfect size; however, as it seems there are no custom options available at all when ordering on the Razer website, I'd like to know how challenging it will be to install a better CPU (I believe the only CPU it ships with is the i7-3632QM), second SSD and 16GB RAM.

 

You can't swap motherboards between laptops. They're all pretty much proprietary, nothing would line up or connect. In order to accept a faster CPU it would need to be accepted by the BIOS and the cooling to be sufficient, that I don't think anyone knows because nobody's tried it. I believe the HDD is 7mm form factor, and the SSD is an mSATA which you technically should be able to swap.

As for RAM, I believe it has 2 DIMM slots. Look back in this thread a ways as one user opened theirs up and showed the guts. Although keep in mind that by opening up your Blade it voids the warranty.

 

The only problem I think you'd have with putting a different CPU in there would just be a thermal problem...

Doesn't really need a new CPU in it, just the ability to OC it would be nice -_-

The HDD's can be swapped someoens done that already IIRC

 

Thanks very much, Wingnut - just to confirm, when you say it voids the warranty, it's not the way hp handles these things, is it, where only those things you have changed are voided (i.e., change the HDD and the warranty no longer covers HDD failure, but everything else is still covered.), or is there some kind of seal where they void everything if you just open the chassis at all?

Thanks, do you know whether it is the i7-3632QM inside? They don't list the CPU model on the Razer website.

I use a lot of 64-bit applications, extremely large files in photoshop and creative suite apps, motion graphics and video effect rendering, so the CPU is quite important for me, but I need a laptop which is thin and portable. I imagine the i7-3632QM is a bit faster than my i7-820QM, but I was hoping for a significant upgrade with Ivy Bridge.

 

It is the 3632QM. Upgrading between Ivy Bridge CPU's shouldn't be as big of a leap from an 820QM to an ivy bridge. They're all still i7's and as far as I know there's not much difference between them other than clock speeds and .1GHZ/.2GHZ is a difference yes but not a big one, but if we were able to just OC this chip a little it would be fine =)

Here's a picture of the internals

http://media.beta.photobucket.com/user/2boysMommyRN/media/Razer%20Blade/IMG050.jpg.html?filters[term]=razer%20blade%20notebookreview&filters[primary]=images#/user/2boysMommyRN/media/Razer%20Blade/IMG050.jpg.html?filters%5Bterm%5D=razer%20blade%20notebookreview&filters%5Bprimary%5D=images&_suid=13528238105040944269206164732

It's on page 8 with some other pics if you're interested in seeing the others.

As far as the warranty goes, I'm pretty sure theirs is the crappy kind where if it's even opened your whole warranty is void and from what I've heard (you'll have to see the pic to get this part) even if you put that tape exactly back how it is somehow razer still knows if you're cracked it open and will void you =(. Anyway, as you can see the pic, SSD at the top right, and I belive that's the HDD below it, so a swap out should be pretty simple. Anything other than that would require taking the keyboard out/the whole thing apart it looks like, so upgrading the RAM would be a little tough =( - especially considering this thing has that unibody design to it -- Edit: on second thought it might not be that hard, it looks like the whole thing could just be lifted out of the bottom, so all you might have to do is just move the fans and lift out the mobo and you're good to go with whatever you want to do.

I was really excited when I saw xoticpc start selling these as they're awesome about doing upgrade and swap outs for their lines of laptops they carry, but this one is a little bit more tricky to to work on, so I'm not surprised they haven't done anything with it yet

I mean the RAM could be under that big black plastic part at the very top but I'm 95% certian that's just where the battery is.

 

Ah, thanks very much for clarifying all this!

Really, I had no idea XoticPC was selling them. That's good news, perhaps they will offer a tricked out version

 

Where's the HDD? I plan on swapping mine's out with a Samsung 840 Pro 512 GB SSD and would like to know where it is situated. The design of this laptop is a nightmare...

I found the answer to my question, another user posted a picture of the laptop innards with the HDD still installed.

 

Mother of God. That guy is just...WOW. I wouldn't have even tried to do that, haha...Definitely not looking forward to breaking this thing open if I ever do.

I'd like to also upgrade to a bigger SSD, anyone know what's inovlved with that? I'm assuming you swap out the old smaller one, and you're good to go but isn't windows then partitioned on our HDD? How would we transfer that over to the SSD to get the faster speeds without making the new SSD a cache drive?

Are their actually any downsides to making a new SSD being a cache drive? Sounds like it just stores your most commonly used files, so Windows, games...etc and they'll all boot at SSD speeds anyway...soo??

 

If the 64GB SSD is being used as a cache drive, I don't think there is going to be much benefit from increasing the size beyond 64GB. You would get a better performance increase from replacing the HDD with SSD and using both SSDs in Raid0.

When you look at My Computer, does it show two separate drives for storage, 64GB and 500GB, or just one drive in a Raid?

I imagine you would need to first back up your factory installed Raided drive image including OS, etc., to external drive, then disable the Raid setup, so you have two separate drives (This deletes all data on both drives). Then replace the factory HDD with your new SSD, enable Raid0 again, then transfer the data back from the external drive. Not familiar with the Dataplex cache acceleration utility that comes standard on the 2nd gen Blade, but I imagine you need make sure there is no drive cache feature enabled anymore if you are using 2 SSDs, just a Raid0 partition.

 

I have no idea where the HDD is either, I don't see any indication of it.

There's absolutely no reason to RAID SSD's. Their performance is phenomenal to start, and you won't even notice any performance gain for most stuff you do if you run in RAID.

The SSD is an mSATA SSD, and you can see it here:

 

The reason I do it is because I get double the read/write speeds of a single drive.

I work with lots of huge media files, and when I'm working on my laptop I may be rendering effects, playing back these big files all day, transferring them back and forth to external storage over and over, etc. In my case this makes a huge difference.

My envy 15 came factory installed from HP already with two Intel X18-M G2 1.8" drives in a caddy in Raid0. Even three years after buying this laptop, my sequential read/write speeds are still around 550MBps read, 350MBps write in CrystalDiskMark, approximately double what it would be for a single one of these drives. Boot time is 12 seconds, shutdown 3-4 seconds, loading times for big files in my applications are lightning fast. With the 2nd gen Blade's SATA III connectors, I imagine an SSD Raid can really shine.

In the case of the 2nd gen Blade, do we know if the factory HDD is using a SATA 2 connector, or SATA 3?

 

Connector should be the same. No reason to think the port is SATA 2, either. Only two SATA 3 on the chipset, only two drives.

The HDD location and cabling is detailed in the spoilers of sadzebra's post from early October.

 

350MBps write with X18m? I'll believe it when I see it. IIRC, X18m only gets about 70MBps maximum with a single SSD and you never get truly double improvement with RAID 0. You can achieve those speeds you quoted though (550MBps/350MBps) or quite close with a single Samsung or Crucial SSD *and* have TRIM support which won't be supported with an add-in RAID card, only through Intel's onboard RAID and their latest drivers.

edit: even Intel's own documents indicate 70 MB/s Sequential Write, so at best it would be 140MB/s, which is easily bested by any SSD today.

http://ark.intel.com/products/56589/Intel-SSD-X18-M-Series-80GB-1_8in-microSATA-3Gbs-34nm-MLC

 

raid 0 SSD's... Shogun 2: Total war battles actually load in a decent amount of time...

 

I went back and reviewed some of the earliest CrystalDiskMark scores from when I first unboxed my laptop with factory settings and they were a little more than double ( 522 MBps read / 219 MBps write) Okashira's read/write results ( 267 MBps read / 88.7 MBps write) for the 80GB Intel G2 installed in his desktop. The Random 4KB read scores have always been bad with the envy 15, however.

I've run CrystalDiskMark quite a few times over the years, as we have two of these laptops with the same specs, also got rid of a lot of bloatware, windows drive indexing, etc., and the results vary but I have definitely seen as high as 550MBps sequential read and as high as 350MBps sequential write. (Also seen as low as 480MBps seq. read / 170 MBps seq. write) I'll run it again soon to see how well it is holding up, or is there a better drive benchmark application these days?

This dual drive caddy has served well and it would be great if I can make use of it in my next laptop, but it sounds like perhaps the HDD uses a SATA 3 connector and my understanding is that the dual drive caddy fits a 2.5" drive bay - the HDD is a different size (7mm), correct?

Haven't tried Shogun yet, but I can tell you in the case of Civ 5, the loading times are due to the CPU taking a long time to process all the A.I. actions at the end of each round, so in my case I doubt the SSD has helped much. If I play on a huge map with lots of civs, by the modern era I'm still waiting a long time for each round.

For most other games, however, the loading times are very fast, almost nonexistent.

 

Would a better i7 (3840) be noticeably better in load times than a 3640?

 

For Civ 5, which is a very CPU-bound game, I would imagine every little bit of improvement in the processor probably helps reduce the time waiting at the end of each turn. No idea about Shogun.

 

For those who still waiting for Razer Blade orders for this batch from JB!!!

There is a price reduction from JB, from $2998 to $2548. I ordered yesterday, canceled it today and reorder it again, i am able to saved $450!

So, for those still waiting for the order to dispatch, cancel it while you still can and save up some bucks.

 

For those having WiFi issues, I checked Intel for the stock wireless card that came with the Blade R2 (Intel N-6235) for driver updates - lo and behold, there was a package pushed out early. The release date says 11/15/12, I'm not sure if they just like to release updates early but it was a nice surprise.

I'm downloading the package as I type this to try them out. I've been having spikes when playing certain online games with my Blade wirelessly, but none when wired. So, I'm hoping it's just a software driver issue. Here's a link if anyone else wants to try.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Det...5&DownloadType=Software+Applications&lang=eng

 

Is JB the name of a retailer?

 

Oh yea, "JB HI FI" is only base in Australia. They might do international shipment as well.

 

Anyone know an easy way to OC the 3632QM in this thing? I'd imagine setfsb would allow it but for the life of me I can't figure it out!

 

Wish they'd release this in the uk.

 

There's almost no way to OC without a BIOS mod. using Setfsb or any other tool that changes the fsb speed from 100 to almost anything else is useless. Even moreso, with the newer chipsets, changing fsb speeds can seriously affect system stability. Until there's a way to increase the multiplier, there's almost no point.

 

is anyone getting terrible performance when playing blackops 2??? Frame rates are literally unplayable even with almost all of the settings cranked down

 

AWESOME! Just called them then, they just said to bring in the receipt and they'll give us the equivalent cash back. I can't believe Australia is almost matching the US on premium laptops for price. Just awesome. Takes a load of the Credit debt

Just one more week!

 

alright boys and girls. Just discovered something thats been bothering me for a couple weeks. Some games (such as dishonored, black ops, and many others) won't auto-detect your nvidia 660m gpu unless you go into the nvidia control panel and, under global setting, set your preferred gpu as the "high performance nvidia processor"; other wise some games will use the integrated intel graphics 4000 instead which will cut your fps in half or even worse..

like I said, some games detect the gpu and some do not, but if you have been having some lag issues or have needed to crank down your in-game settings, then I suggest trying this out.

 

thanks for that, good to know about how to fix things before they happen to me

 

Also if you have gaming issues make sure your power profile is set to "high performance" because running "balanced" or especially "power saver" can and will hinder performance.